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We moved from one county to another across the Columbia River and our electrical rates went from 2.3 cents a killowatt hour to 2.7 cents a kilowatt hour!!! Now!!! just 20 years later they are talking about raising rates to 3.1 cents!!!!
I called to complain about the "high electrical rates" just one county over.....and was told that was that, move back over the river.
I agree with the posters above who point out the variability challenge. In states with deregulated electricity, a ratepayer might have 5-10 options for where to purchase electricity, each with different rates.
But there might be cities within those states that have municipal electric utilities and the ratepayer just has one option. I just moved from one of those cities last year. Our electric rates were lower than the cities with multiple providers, but they included surcharges for things the city wanted to pay for besides electricity. An apples-to-apples comparison would have been meaningless.
I spent a few minutes looking up our energy cost per kWh (Southern California Edison) but man, was it complicated. Basically, the price varies between 15 and 19 cents according to whether it's summer or winter, and peak or off-peak hours. That's high, but of course whether any individual household's bill is high depends on usage.
If you look at the list of states, the ones with high energy usage are all ones with long, hot, and humid summers: Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and so forth. Obviously if you run the a/c 24/7 for three or four months, your bills are going to be pretty high regardless of how cheap electricity is per kWh.
Here in SoCal, we used our a/c several hours a day for maybe five weeks last summer. As a result, our July and August bills were $130 and $125. Our average monthly bill for 10 months of the year, however, is only about $60 because we just don't need a/c most of the time. Only Maine and Hawaii (according to newgensandiego's link) use less energy per household than California.
I wonder how much the rate percentage changed for Michigan after this summer. Between DTE raising their rates in July, the loss of the grant (which hit in July) and "summer".....
Not all Michigan customers are on DTE's grid, but the majority of the population is in the Detroit area and uses DTE for electricity. Everyone in my area was just livid because there was no warning this was going to happen and a lot of people's billed doubled from what they had budgeted. It was just a mess and everyone was talking about their crazy electric bills. It was a "hot" topic around town. (pun intended!)
So - yeah - wasn't too surprised to see that Michigan's rates were high, then I noticed that the survey was taken before the rate increases had taken effect. So, I'd be curious to see how much the numbers went up after July 2019.
Yes, totally agree. The worst part about DTE in SE Michigan is that they continue to raise rates, or add bogus fees, and basically negate any individual efforts at conservation. My electric usage has decreased in terms of monthly kWh, yet my bill has increased......why? Increased rates and more fees! (Same thing happens with water bills, BTW.) Use less and pay more. In Michigan, DTE will get their money one way or the other. I thought I read that DTE gets 10% rate increases every year from the state legislature, I could be wrong on that, but I'll have to search for that article.
I spent a few minutes looking up our energy cost per kWh (Southern California Edison) but man, was it complicated. Basically, the price varies between 15 and 19 cents according to whether it's summer or winter, and peak or off-peak hours. That's high, but of course whether any individual household's bill is high depends on usage.
If you look at the list of states, the ones with high energy usage are all ones with long, hot, and humid summers: Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and so forth. Obviously if you run the a/c 24/7 for three or four months, your bills are going to be pretty high regardless of how cheap electricity is per kWh.
Here in SoCal, we used our a/c several hours a day for maybe five weeks last summer. As a result, our July and August bills were $130 and $125. Our average monthly bill for 10 months of the year, however, is only about $60 because we just don't need a/c most of the time. Only Maine and Hawaii (according to newgensandiego's link) use less energy per household than California.
Excellent point: two variables, kWh rates and kWh usage.
Regarding Maine, I lived in Portland for 2 years (2013-2015), and found that I didn't need AC at all in the summer. However, the kWh rate is high in Maine.
In terms of heating, natural gas is expensive in Maine due to the lack of pipelines, unlike the midwest which has many nat gas pipelines and cheap nat gas prices. In my case, I was renting a condo in Portland, and heat was included in the high rent. It was a 100 year old brick bldg totally renovated, so good insulation and probably reasonable heating costs for the owners. Terrible winters though! LOL
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